What will happen with the Ripple lawsuit?
Gary Gensler, who is expected to be confirmed as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will have many crypto-related issues to deal with — not least of which is a lawsuit filed in December against Ripple by the SEC.
In its complaint, the SEC accused Ripple and its executives Brad Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen of selling more than $1 billion in digital currency without registering with the SEC. While SEC officials have said publicly that they don’t believe Bitcoin or Ethereum are securities that must be registered, the lawsuit indicates that the SEC views Ripple differently.
“I’ve been surprised that the suit wasn’t filed a long time ago because Ripple is very different from Bitcoin or Ethereum,” Angela Walch, law professor and cryptocurrency expert at St. Mary’s School of Law, told MarketWatch. “It’s not truly a decentralized currency because you’ve had a single company essentially running it.”
If the SEC is victorious in its suit, that will go a long way in helping define what types of digital assets will be viewed as currencies and which will be viewed as securities, Walch added.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-crypto-investors-will-be-watching-these-5-questions-facing-the-biden-administration-11616442245
